Athens Land Trust grant to help lunchrooms get local

Saturday

Local food in the lunchroom and agriculture in the (outdoor) classroom are already flowering in the Clarke County School District.

A new federal grant awarded to the Athens Land Trust should grow those programs to maturity.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that the Athens Land Trust was among 71 programs to receive funds to boost local food in schools.

The grant will join the county's existing school gardens and steadily increasing local food use in the lunchroom with the land trust's urban farms, which now tally two, and its Young Urban Farmer program. The program gives students from Classic City High School an opportunity to grow and sell vegetables grown at the West Broad Market Garden, just down the street from the school.

The West Broad Market Garden itself will become a vendor for the Clarke County School District, acting as a food hub that collects produce from farmers - essentially making West Broad Market Garden the school district's local food pantry.

Embedded in the grant is support for educators who may need a push to teach about fresh vegetables or encourage students to try something green at lunch.

USDA's Food and Nutrition Service Undersecretary Kevin Concannon said that students and schools "have become detached from where their food comes from." Part of the problem, he said, is persuading educators that one-on-one connections with the roots of food is "relevant to a student's education."

Paula Farmer, the Clarke County School District's director of school nutrition, has been an early adopter of local foods in the schools. Students eating in Clarke lunchrooms this fall ate locally grown peaches, watermelon, summer squash, green beans and corn on the cob.

The USDA's Farm to School program in funded under the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which gave the ag department power to increase U.S. student's access to local food.

The act also requires school lunchrooms to serve fruits and vegetables at breakfast and lunch. Concannon sees school gardens as "laboratories" where students can become more familiar with different vegetables, perhaps choosing carrots for their lunch plates after learning how to plant them.

One goal of the grants is to show students the potential careers agriculture offers, or at least learn life skills.

Athens Land Trust's Nancy Stangle said the grant was years in the making and was only made possible through organizational partnerships.

"It's a big communitywide effort," she said. Stangle counted the Clarke County School District nutrition department, the county's agriculture science teachers, Keep Athens Clarke County Beautiful's Green Schools program and the University of Georgia as partners.

The land trust's recently acquired Williams Family Farm on Ruth Street in north Athens will grow food intended for Clarke County schools, Stangle confirmed, but land trust growing spaces are not expected to provide all the local produce for the schools.

There will be an effort to increase the presence of produce grown on school premises in the lunchroom, Stangle said.

According to the USDA's Farm to School census, 52 percent of Georgia school districts participate in some aspect of Farm to School, with 18 percent incorporating edible school gardens. Every school in Clarke County has some form of edible garden, with the middle and high schools offering agriscience programs to students. Georgia schools bought nearly $10 million worth of local food in 2012, with 68 percent of spending going toward fruits and vegetables.

•Follow arts and entertainment reporter André Gallant on Twitter: @andregallant and at www.facebook.com/GallantABH.

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